Adding Google Analytics to WordPress in 5 Simple Steps:

Google Analytics is a VERY USEFUL tool for digital marketers around the world. It can tell us many things about our website and the statistical data it provides can’t be disputed. Not all websites have this holy grail of marketing and to be honest it really surprises me. IT IS AN ESSENTIAL.

It’s time to tell you exactly how you can adding Google Analytics to WordPress in 5 simple steps.

Step 1 – Create a Gmail (or sign-in if you already have one)

You’ll need a Gmail account to be able to sign up with Google Analytics.

The latest Google penalty comes as a bit of a good surprise – Google are penalising websites with intrusive interstitials:

It’s no secret Google are constantly updating their algorithms to accommodate for users and give them the best experience possible. After all, the sole purpose of Google’s existence is for the user to get to where they need to be whilst having the best experience possible.

In light of this, Google are penalising websites with intrusive interstitial.

Hooray, finally a win we can all get behind (intrusive interstitial ads are annoying for the most part)!

What are interstitials?

Before we carry on, a small portion of you are probably making this face right about now:

So, let me show you exactly what interstitials are. Ever seen something like this pop up when you’re trying to browse a website on your mobile?

They can either come in ad form, or could be some sort of legal notice or requirement (ie cookies usage or age verification).

What counts as “intrusive”?

Glad you asked! Google have issued this official statement:

“Although the majority of pages now have text and content on the page that is readable without zooming, we’ve recently seen many examples where these pages show intrusive interstitials to users. While the underlying content is present on the page and available to be indexed by Google, content may be visually obscured by an interstitial. This can frustrate users because they are unable to easily access the content that they were expecting when they tapped on the search result…To improve the mobile search experience, after January 10, 2017, pages where content is not easily accessible to a user on the transition from the mobile search results may not rank as highly.”

The following Image gives you a visual representation of what’s not okay:

Making your content “less accessible to a user” makes you vulnerable to a penalty. Furthermore, here are examples Google gave:

Showing a popup that covers the main content, either immediately after the user navigates to a page from the search results, or while they are looking through the page.

Displaying a standalone interstitial that the user has to dismiss before accessing the main content.

Using a layout where the above-the-fold portion of the page appears similar to a standalone interstitial, but the original content has been inlined underneath the fold.

As aforementioned, if there is a legal interstitial, you’ll be fine. Heck, even having an ad that’s reasonably placed is fine, just stray from being intrusive.

Again, they have gone on to add more detail:

Interstitials that appear to be in response to a legal obligation, such as for cookie usage or for age verification.

Login dialogs on sites where content is not publicly indexable. For example, this would include private content such as email or unindexable content that is behind a paywall.

Banners that use a reasonable amount of screen space and are easily dismissible. For example, the app install banners provided by Safari and Chrome are examples of banners that use a reasonable amount of screen space.

Remember to comply because businesses have already seen ranking lost. It’s been a long time coming and Google are penalising websites with intrusive interstitials so it’s time to get with the standard and comply! Give us a call on 0121 285 1100 and dial extension 1 or simply email us at [email protected] and let’s talk. We can drive your business in the right direction ensuring you’re penalty free. Pick up the phone or email today!

Creating the best content without even trying

Every business will need social media to help build their brand awareness, and define their audience for those social channels as well. But what do you do once those tasks are done?

Create branded content!

That way you can share this information with your target audience, while still directing them to your website. The best way to do is to establish a blogging platform into your website.

But how can you create content that people will want to read? We’ve got some top tips for you to help create great content!

The idea

Always the starting point for any blog is, what is my unique idea? While unique ideas are rare (it is seriously hard to find something that has no search results) you can still take a classic idea and put your own personal spin on it.

For example, you Google “How to create great blog content” and you see all 128 million results appear before your eyes – that’s a lot of competition!

As you can see, the first page is chock-a-block with amazing content to help you write content – but they all have taken to putting their own spin on it!

The first one appeals to the complete novice, the next one appeals to the formulaic person, and the third one is provoking an emotional response!

While the content may be the same in the end, their approach is different! Make sure you find your unique approach before you even start writing!

The research

You either love it or you hate, but you will have to do research if you want your idea to blossom. The amount of times I have gone to write a blog, only to turn it completely on its head after researching!

When we say research, we don’t mean that you need to find every single point you want to make, just find a common point raised within your research and go with that!

Research is also great to find out if your topic is hot or not! Is your idea being talked about right now? Then write about it now! Topic looking a little bit cold? Then still write it, but sit on it until it is hot!

The best way to see what’s hot and what’s not is Google Adwords.

Here’s a great example of someone using Google Adwords to help with their research!

They’ve typed in their product and it’s produced ad groups that contain lots of keywords. You can see it’s also showing you how many average monthly searches these ad groups get.

While the best monthly search may scream “pick me!” make sure it has relevant keywords to your brand.

When you start to look at the individual keywords within these groups, you can start to see what topics people are searching for, and create content around that!

The title

What drew you in to this blog? Was it the closing paragraph? Was it the convincing social status that went with it? No, you saw the title!

The title is the sales person for your blog. They are on the front line, drawing in the audience (you) to learn about the information inside (our bit!)

Studies have shown that blogs that go viral usually contain numbers, digits and lists. They also define what the article is about, demonstrate the value the blog will bring them and bring excitement! Address the reader directly as well and you’ll be sure to get a click!

Some great examples of great blog titles include:

10 Reasons to Create a Twitter Profile

How to Write a Tweet: Tweeting 101

Create an Eye-Watering Infographic in Minutes

15 Social Media Tools You’ll Love to Work With

Structure

So you’ve got your great idea (well done!) and done your research (congrats!) and even thought of the catchiest title (I am very impressed!). Now what do you do? You start writing?

Hold up, take a step back!

You need to think about the structure of your post. Do you want a big standard blog? Or do you want to make things interesting? Maybe that blog would make a great infographic? Or add some additional images and make it a gallery post?

You need to establish what will get your point across the best? Are you educating your audience, starting a discussion or entertaining them? These all have very different presentation styles!

If you’re trying to talk about something that involves a lot of statistics, an infographic is your way forward! They are a fantastic way of getting lots and LOTS of numbers across without boring anyone!

If you’re showing off the latest building work you’ve done, try and be creative with the visuals – don’t just describe the new designs, show them off!

Images

You’re going to need something to accompany all that great content you’ve written!

Images are a great resource to help guide your audience through what you’ve written without losing them. If someone were to see a giant block of text, they’ll click right off and you’ll lose an audience member.

Always try to source the best quality images for your blog (it only deserves the best!), but if you can’t afford Shutterstock, there are plenty of ways to get some free quality images, if you’re willing to do some scrolling!

Places like Pexels and Google Images are great for getting copyright free images. That way you don’t have to worry about upsetting the photographer!

For Google, you will need to put certain search parameters in to avoid copyright issues. To do this, you need to do the following:

When you’re on Google Images, click on “Tools”

Go to “Usage Rights” and select the drop down menu

Click “Label for Reuse”

You should now be able to use any of the images showing up now!

So that’s the basics you need to get your business started on its content adventure! Good luck, soon you’ll be creating the best content without even trying!

It seems there may be another Google Core Algorithm Change to come…

The dark forces at Google may be at it again with yet another Google Core Algorithm Change, just when we thought we fought them off with mobile friendly websites and fast loading web pages! If you haven’t checked your organic search traffic for the past couple of days, perhaps you should put this at the top of your “to do list”.

Your site’s ranking may have plummeted (or skyrocketed up) which means it’s imperative for businesses to know where they currently stand in terms of organic ranking! Google hasn’t come forward and said anything, but there seems to be a whole lot of chatter within the search community, with a few key indicators pointing towards a change in Google’s CORE search algorithm.

A lot of Digital Marketers are convinced that there was a Google Core Algorithm Change based on 2 main facts:

Organic rankings fluctuating.

Forecasts from influencers (Moz, SERP metrics etc).

Organic Rankings Fluctuating:

People will argue that rankings are constantly fluctuating, so they’ll be quick to dismiss this as a key indicator. Well, to those people we say that the fluctuations weren’t specific to any industry. In fact, multiple businesses from various industries saw their ranking change, some more drastically than others. The following two tweets show that this possible change is something NOT to be ignored:

@rustybrick seeing some large fluctuations for rankings in the UK today. Have you seen any other reports? Possible algorithm update/change?

(Granted, the above is just an update and not a core change, but still goes to show how detrimental Google changes can be).

Moz Forecast:

Many search ranking tools are showing signs of “spikes” which indicate possible changes in Google’s organic search algorithm. One of the most notable of all these is the Moz forecast. According to Moz themselves, Mozcast is:

“a weather report showing turbulence in the Google algorithmover the previous day (or see the 5-day history on the left). The hotter and stormier the weather, the more Google’s rankings changed.”

The forecast which went out on Thursday 1st September was significantly higher than any others that same week. The numbers were previously averaging from anywhere between 70-85, however, on the 1st September it shot up to 108 degrees!

As mentioned earlier, many other tools like SERP Metrics and Algoroo were displaying similar behaviours, which means there may well be another algorithm change from Google coming soon. What are your thoughts? Comment below and let us know!

What it takes to be a champion

Welcome back to #inthezone guys! Can you believe it’s been over a week since #DigitalZone? Well, neither can we! Oh how time does fly. You’d probably think that since #DigitalZone finished we’d be at the office, sipping orange juice in our chairs with feet up on the table relaxing…how wrong you are! It’s been another hectic week, let’s tell you all about it:

So, firstly we wanted to go over something inspirational. You probably heard or watched one of the biggest underdog stories in the football world, or the sports world altogether for that matter. Yes that’s right, Leicester City won the Premiere League! Coming in to the season, the odds of them winning were 5000:1, so if you put £1 on Leicester City, congratulations because you just won 5 grand. In short, NEVER write someone off, it may come back to bite you! Before we finish up talking about Leicester City’s big triumph, we want to keep you updated on everything that’s been happening at Wow Zone.

Like we stated earlier, we haven’t put our feet up and stopped working. Contrary to what you might believe, it’s actually been very busy at Wow. How have we been keeping ourselves busy, you ask? Well, the launch of the famous Mr Mango Delivery’s website was the main stressor. Some of us had to put in extra hours to ensure the launch ran smoothly…and smoothly it ran! Please, go to the website and show some support. They have an AMAZING offer on rice, a 20kg bag of Basmati rice for ONLY £8.99. We’ve enhanced the user experience and everything is just so much better! Click here to go on to the new Mr Mango Delivery’s website!

In other news, we have another huge announcement to make! We’ve almost secured a new client, and they’re a huge business! 2016 is not only the year of the Mango, but also the year we push ourselves to completely new heights. As you can imagine, we’re not allowed to say much about it yet, but we’re almost there and will hopefully have more details for you in the near future. For now though, we’ll settle for a small scale celebration. We’ve been so busy we haven’t even celebrated the success of #DigitalZone yet…embarrassing, right?

Coming back to the topic of Leicester City, it’s not only just a victory, but also a huge statement. What is that statement? In the real world, it doesn’t matter what the odds are. As long as your work ethic is on point, you have dedicated teamwork, you have strong leadership and your goal is the same; you’ll come out on top! Furthermore, you may not always come out with the result you wanted, but if you stick with something and remain consistent, the world is your oyster! Aaaaand THAT’S what it takes to be a champion! This can easily be transferred to businesses, make sure your team is united for a common purpose and there’s nothing you can’t achieve! Peace out folks, this is it for this week’s #inthezone 🙂 See you next week!

Magento SEO Part 2

SEO is becoming increasingly important in this extremely competitive, business world. Basic SEO knowledge can go a long way for many businesses. With great, positive impacts such as increased traffic, increased sales and higher brand awareness, you’d be mad not to take advantage. So this lead me to make a sequel of my first SEO article to provide you with a few more ways to improve your #SEOGAME! Not to worry, it won’t be a horrific sequel like Transformers 2 or anything. Moving back on to the topic of SEO…There are many things you can do with Magento to enhance your #SEOGAME, Here are my 4 great Magento SEO tips:

1) Write descriptive/relevant page titles:

Page titles are crucial for your #SEOGAME (okay I’ll stop using the hashtag now). Pages with descriptive (and relevant) content are far more likely to appear in a user’s Google search results. So for example if you wanted to sell a dining table, you wouldn’t write just “dining table”, you’d write something like “Rustic solid Oak dining table 150CM x 100CM”. Be as descriptive as you can to attract a wider variety of searches.

2) Keep on top of off-page SEO:

Magento is a fairly easy ecommerce platform to optimize for search engines, however it is still bound by the laws of SEO. In order to gain a ranking (this most applies to people in a competitive market) you can’t neglect off-page SEO. A combination of both on-page & off-Page SEO makes for a deadly combination against your competitors. A good example of off-page SEO is social media. It can be a powerful tool when implemented correctly, unfortunately many people do not use it to its full advantage. Another element people lack is mentions from their industry influencers. For example, if you were in the marketing industry, a mention from Moz would be extremely valuable as it is relevant and can be worth a huge amount of visibility!

3) Integrate Google Analytics into your Magento site:

Using google analytics can really boost your SEO. Knowing where most of your traffic is coming from can be extremely valuable to say the least. If you know where most of your traffic is going you can allocate more resources to that certain area or more specifically, that single landing page. If you’re not already using the basic features of Google Analytics then you should most definitely question your sanity, then when you’re done with that, go create an account. After doing this, get it integrated with your Magento site to heighten your approach to SEO.

4) Get some good Google+ local product reviews:

When devising a local SEO strategy, the word “reviews” should be a regularly used word. Reviews are a key element for local SEO. Not only do they affect your ranking for Google’s local search results, they heavily affect peoples’ buying decisions. This makes them equally as important as many other factors included in local SEO. Even with a top local search ranking, you may be skipped out by the potential customer for simply not having any reviews. The user may want to base their decision on an unbiased, third party review as opposed to the “sales-y” description you provide for them.

These are just 4 of many great ways to up your SEO game, comment some of your favourite SEO methods below! 🙂

SEO Tips & tricks to implement on your Magento website.

In an infinitely expanding online world, it can be difficult for companies to get the attention they require to grow. Businesses in this day and age are using little tricks everywhere to ensure they stand out from the crowd. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is an important consideration for anyone selling online. You might find that simple techniques like changing Meta descriptions/titles or adding alt tags to images (basic SEO tactics) can go a long way. For those of you who don’t know what SEO is, it’s probably best you turn your computer off, sit in silence and try to figure out where it all went wrong.

Why is it important to optimise my site?

With an ever expanding business market, it’s always nice to be noticed. This is the very essence of SEO, improving visibility so your ideal customer is able to find you with ease. Still can’t comprehend the importance of SEO? Well, in simple terms, better SEO = more potential conversions…Now, that got your attention didn’t it?

Tips & Tricks

Updating your current version of Magento: A good place to start optimising is simply installing the latest version of Magento. If you wish to maximise Magento SEO results, it is imperative that you do this, it’s as simple as that. For other Magento related information, and to find out about their latest updates it’s probably a good idea to follow their blog.

Changing URLs: Automatically generated URLs can be too long, and may sometimes contain store codes. This is not good Magento SEO practice and if this problem occurs you’ll need to manually change this. To exorcise these cursed URLs on Magento, go to system (located at the top of the admin panel) then click “configuration” which appears on the drop down menu. It’ll take you to a page with a menu on the left, click “web”. Then, finally click where it says “Add Store Code to URLs”, select no…

You’re welcome. ­­

Image alt tags: This element isn’t Magento specific, but quite often it can be found that product images are ignored and not exploited to their full ability. Since Google cannot recognise what an image entails, an Image alt tag (or alt tag) is a small description of the image given by its creator. So if someone took a picture of a tennis ball, you’d expect their alt tag to be something like “Green tennis ball” (depending on how sane they are). By simply having a keyword-rich image alt tag, you can benefit from an increase in site traffic, higher SEO rankings and more. Want to reap these benefits? Then stop neglecting those poor images begging to be optimised.

Page speed: With Google noticing the ever-rising increase in the use of mobile/handheld devices, it announced its favouritism for mobile-friendly sites. A quick loading, responsive website will be more favourable to Google and so you might find yourself ranking higher providing your site meets these conditions. Slow, unresponsive sites tend to have a higher bounce rate, and a higher bounce rate means lower ranking on Google.

Blogging: It has been proven time and time again that blogging is a great way to bring in that little bit of extra traffic to your site. Industry specific articles (bringing in targeted audiences) mixed with hot topics/trends can impact your business substantially overtime. It’s important to note that people are more likely to remember your brand if your blog posts provide some kind of value.

Using these five tricks in conjunction with each other will definitely see some kind of return (if done right). Increased website traffic, lower bounce rates, higher click through rates and higher rankings for search engines are all positive signs. Good luck with your optimisation!

As Wikipedia has probably already told you that PageRank was named after Larry Page, the co-founder of Google. It may also have told you that it is a ranking scale that takes into account the amount of inbound links that a webpage has, as well as the amount of outbound links there are coming from the webpage. From this, a webpage’s PageRank is determined. The PageRank equation can be expressed as shown below:

This equation basically shows that when another webpage links back to the webpage in question (u), that page’s total PageRank is divided by the total number of outbound links on the page. This is then the amount of PageRank that is transferred over to page ‘u’ (often reffered to as ‘link juice’). The equation then gets the sum of all of the PageRank that is being transferred to page ‘u’ from the set of webpages that link to it (Bu). This then makes up the total PageRank for the webpage ‘u’.

Hopefully that hasn’t confused you too much because, in essence, it is a fairly simple idea, however; PageRank isn’t the ‘be all and end all’ of link building. Not only that but Google keeps these figures very closely hidden, so it is extremely hard to find out your exact PageRank. Google does, however, periodically post an inkling into what kind of PageRank a webpage as through the Google Toolbar PageRank (TBPR), which is ranked between 1 and 10 (10 being the best).